Month: April 2019

The Enigma of the ‘Progressive Prosecutor’

Dale Seufert-NavarroLeave a comment
AP PHOTO/Kiichiro Sato

There is little doubt that the current state of the American criminal justice system is one of abject corruption and rampant unfairness. The United States is also the most incarcerated nation in the world, with an estimated 2.2 million people behind bars. While the U.S. represents about 4 percent of the world’s population, it houses around 22 percent of the world’s prisoners. Sadly, this number does not include the staggering 4.5 million people that are supervised on probation or parole. Compounding this issue is the sheer racial and economic disparities of that system. There are many factors that have aided in the creation of this malignant environment of cancerous oppression – inherited unconscious biases, outright racist politicians, and well-intentioned community leaders – that is our criminal justice system. 

The American criminal justice system is a complex web of individuals, policies, laws, and socioeconomic dynamics that all intersect to form what we have today, a system that was remade from the Jim Crow era and criminalizes the poor. So, with so many different variables, what is the most important piece to this puzzle? Who is the most influential person or entity in this system? Is it the judges that oversee trials and pass down sentences? What about the police, with their frequent use of force? All have their spheres of influence, but the prosecutor stands above them all in power and discretion. Indeed, the prosecutor is the most powerful person in the criminal justice system. 

 The prosecutor is the only person with the power to decide who to charge with a crime, what charges to bring, what sentence to seek, or to simply dismiss a case. All of these falls under the prosecutor’s discretion. Most people do not even realize that 97 percent of cases do not even go before a judge, the majority of cases are resolved in the plea bargain process. 

Also, many do not know that almost all District Attorneys are elected officials. Given that these individuals hold this much power, it is essential that the right people are elected to the office. Here steps in the ‘progressive prosecutor.’ The term progressivehas become a buzz word on the left, with many politicians and public figures trying to claim the title – rightly so or not. The ‘progressive prosecutor’ may be somewhat of a conundrum, as the two words seem to go together as well as oil and water. Historically, the institution of the prosecutor’s office has been anything but progressive, instead it has been just another regressive arm of an equally repressive system. Even presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, has tried to brand her time as a District Attorney in California in this way. I would contend, given her record, this is a fairly far stretch of its intended meaning. 

Oftentimes, activists and organizers rely on fighting an unjust system with outside pressure. While this will always be needed, even with a perceived ally on the inside, a sympathetic fighter in the seat of power can do a lot to move the needle of justice. There is hope, however. Across the country people are waking up to this fact and are working towards electing progressive prosecutors, individuals that are helping to rethink the criminal justice system. In fact, during the 2016 election cycle, there was a slew of more progressive prosecutors elected to public office. 

One such election was that of Kim Foxx of Cook County, Illinois. Foxx ran against controversial incumbent, Anita Alvarez. Alvarez was criticized for her handling of the murder of Laquan McDonald by a police officer, leading to a ground swell of activism to unseat her. Kim Foxx stepped up to the challenge and now runs the second largest prosecutor’s office in the nation, encompassing the city of Chicago. 


Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune

Foxx’s background, growing up in the inner city of Chicago, gives her a unique perspective that she brings to the table. She has stated that her objective is to rethink how we approach crime and its causes. Calling for an ‘holistic’ approach to criminal justice, she recognizes that crime is not just “an issue of good guys versus bad guys.” She understands that this issue is not simply black and white, but inherently complex, often a product of concentrated poverty. There are many reasons for the existence of crime – poverty, childhood experiences, acts of desperation, etc. – and people that commit crime cannot always be seen as just bad people. This ‘either-or’ approach to criminal justice does not reflect the underlying factors of crime or even a logical approach to combating it. Kim Foxx understands this, “I’ve seen people I know and love do bad things – and it makes people hard to sum up.” Most prosecutors believe that there are good and bad people, instead of understanding that sometimes there are good people that do bad things for a myriad of reasons.

Since taking office, Foxx has undertaken an aggressive agenda of reform. She has publicly voiced support for the legalization of marijuana and has said that her office would begin the process of expunging all misdemeanor marijuana convictions. “The question is, how far back can we go? How far back does the data go — which will give us what our universe looks like? But we’re in the process of figuring that out,” says Foxx. 

Kim Foxx is also intent on reforming the bail system in Cook County, using what is called the I-Bond. Under this system, individuals that are charged with misdemeanors and low-level felonies with no history of violent crime and do not pose a public safety risk are released pre-trial. 

“Routinely detaining people accused of low-level offenses who have not yet been convicted of anything, simply because they are poor is not only unjust – it undermines the public’s confidence in the fairness of the system.” – Foxx 

The issue of cash bail has long been a complaint of activists, essentially criminalizing the poor. It’s not uncommon for defendants to simply plead guilty to crimes that they haven’t committed just to get out of jail. There have been countless cases of individuals sitting in jail for months, because they can’t afford to pay bail, before charges are eventually dropped. Once such story is of 16-year-old Kalief Browder. The young man was arrested and charged with stealing a backpack and his bail was set at $3,000. Unable to pay, he sat in jail for three years, two of which were in solitary confinement (a deplorable tactic by the system as well). Although the charges were eventually dismissed, once he was in the system it was difficult for him to escape it due to his prior criminal history. Sadly, he was unable to cope with his imprisonment and took his own life behind bars.    

When talking about Kim Foxx, the case of Jussie Smollet can’t be ignored. It now seems apparent that Smollet did indeed fake his own altercation. Does that mean that he should go to jail, locked up behind bars? All of the talk surrounding criminal justice reform has been somewhat abstract, ‘what ifs.’ Now that we have real reformers in office working towards changing a broken system, things are going to get messy and complicated. Part of that means understanding that just because someone committed a crime, that doesn’t always mean that they should go to jail. It’s about reducing the numbers of incarcerated people and figuring out other ways of dealing with ‘crime and punishment.’ The rest of the world deals with crime in various ways besides throwing people in jail, and those societies are doing just fine. This doesn’t mean they escape some form of punishment, however. Foxx explained it in this way, “We must separate the people at whom we are angry from the people of whom we are afraid.”  

Philadelphia’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, has also been called a progressive prosecutor. Elected in 2017, Krasner also ran on a reformist agenda. Since taking over the district’s office, he has begun implementing a laundry list of criminal justice reforms. The new head of the department made waves when, a week after taking office, he fired 30 prosecutors in the DA’s office that were not committed to the changes he planned on implementing. Krasner has virtually decriminalized marijuana possession by no longer seeking charges for small amounts. For other drugs, his office has begun redirecting people to drug treatment programs instead of jail time. Like Foxx in Chicago he has also stopped asking for bail for nonviolent low-level offenders, saying, “We do not, we should not, imprison people for being poor.”

Larry Krasner –
Kimberly Paynter/WHYY

Krasner has also changed the DA’s office approach to sex work. He has instructed his people to stop charging sex workers that have fewer than three convictions with any crime and has dropped all current cases against workers who also fit that description. Instead, they will be redirecting people to diversionary programs. In fact, he has instructed all prosecutors to avoid convictions if possible and guide cases to diversionary programs. This is radically groundbreaking since prosecutors and DA’s offices usually pride themselves on high conviction rates and jail time. 

Krasner also instituted a policy of stopping the wide-ranging practice of beginning plea deals with the highest possible sentence, instead starting at the bottom end. This practice has frequently frightened innocent people into pleading guilty to crimes that they did not commit. Faced with disgustingly long jail sentences and an unnecessarily complex criminal justice system, people will choose pleading guilty and getting possibly probation or a shorter sentence. He has requested his prosecutors to recommend no probation or a 12-month probationary period. Philly currently has 44,000 people in the probation system, a number so high that it’s nearly impossible to manage. Largely nonviolent offenders, that shouldn’t be in the system as it is, are lumped in with more serious cases, making them harder to manage. 

These reformers, doing absolute necessary work, aren’t without critics. Most of the push-back has come from local police unions. Kevin Graham, the president of the Fraternal Lodge 7 in Illinois has criticized many of Kim Foxx’s policy changes, with most coming from her effort to expunge misdemeanor pot convictions. The police union in Philadelphia has largely criticized Larry Krasner’s new marijuana policies as well.

Marijuana may still be classified as a Scheduled I substance, but science and the general public have long understood that marijuana is less dangerous than substances that the government does not prohibit, like tobacco and alcohol. Indeed, the criminalization of the drug and its severe classification, in the same category of drugs like heroin, has done more harm to ‘offenders’ and society than the actual drug ever could, disproportionately effecting the poor and communities of color. Moving away from the prosecution of simple marijuana possessions frees up money, resources, and time to work on more important and dangerous crime.  

With organizers finally beginning to understand that we must move past criminal justice reform in the abstract and try to understand it in a more tangible way in the real world. We must reexamine how we think about criminal justice and punishment. The easiest thing to do is to just lock someone up but, is this always the best thing to do. This can have crippling effects on a person’s future, family, and on society as a whole. In fact, we as a nation are seeing these ill effects as the most incarcerated nation in the world.

Electing so-called progressive prosecutors is not enough. These prosecutors can work towards dismantling mass incarceration from the inside out. But once elected, activists must continuously hold their feet to the fire and keep a vigilant eye on them. It is our job to make sure that they hold true to their promises of reform and change. Whatever the future holds, with a lot of work still to do, the movement for criminal justice is beginning to see the fruits of its labor. The unsung soldiers working in the trenches, for years unnoticed, have paved the way for us today. Let’s honor their work and sacrifice and continue to fight. The fates, and very lives, of hundreds to thousands of our brothers and sisters are in our hands. 

Dale Seufert-Navarro


What it Means to be a ‘Radical’

Dale Seufert-Navarro1 Comment

emmanuel-Pierre Guittet
Angela Davis in West Germany – Emmanuel Pierre Guittet

Growing up in a lower middle-class family, in a small conservative city in central Virginia dominated by the Evangelical Church and Liberty University, I was always a bit different. To say that I was left of center would be an understatement. I was a gay, vegetarian, non-Christian, outspoken progressive, and that just wasn’t the norm for my little town. When most kids were outside playing, I was reading books on Kabbalah, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and anything spiritual in nature. When most teens were out partying, I was reading about economic and political theories. Now, don’t get me wrong, I stubbed my toes riding my bike and had my fair share of drunken teen parties – just ask my grandmother – but I was still different.

It’s not hard to see why I was pretty odd to many people, my family included. I didn’t fit into that little box that the world had created for me. I was a radical queer teen living in the shadow of Jerry Falwell and the conservative politics that came along with that. It was the late 90s and the early 2000s, and while I didn’t have it as bad as generations before me, there was still this feeling of being an outsider – an ‘other’.

I was hard to understand, especially by my parents, and that’s okay, I get it. We had our struggles like all parent-child dynamics, with a bit more given the gay factor, but they and I did the best we could. In fact, I am very lucky that I grew up in the time that I did. It was the cusp of cultural queer acceptance, and I give thanks to the radical brothers and sisters that paved the way for present generations.

medium.com
Noam Chomsky – Medium.com

In my life I stumbled upon many important and influential figures to look up to and shape my political worldview, from the historical and intellectual to the ordinary yet profound people in my personal life. The towering icons of my cerebral landscape included such important thinkers as Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, Dr. Cornel West, Howard Zinn, Eugene Debs, W.E.B. Du Bois, Saul Alinsky, and of course Karl Marx – among MANY. In my personal life, like most people, my parents and my maternal grandmother had an immense effect on my life and understanding of the world.

While I love all of my family equally, my father had the most important influence on my life and political trajectory. Like many father figures, my dad was always sort of an enigma to me. Always a quiet and reserved person, he was a bit shy. That is until the discussion turns to politics and current events. The passion that he holds for politics is the same passion that runs through my very veins today, well sort of. You see, as unapologetically progressive as I am, my father is definitely not. My dad is a conservative, of the Ayn Rand libertarian school of thought. Over the years, there were many political discussions between the two of us, some small through laughter with others escalating to raised voices ending in storming off to our respective corners of the boxing ring. But through it all, it was my most important education. He has always been my greatest advisory; my greatest opponent. Unlike a lot of ‘conservatives’, he is informed and his ideas come from an intellectual pursuit, although I disagree with mostly all of it.

When he called me a socialist, I accepted it. When he called me a radical, I reveled in it.

His and my family’s past, along with our life as I grew up shaped my political views and overall worldview. My father had an especially hard upbringing, and he devoted every moment of his adult life – along with my mother – to ensure that my brother and I had the opportunities that they did not have. We weren’t rich by any standards of the definition, but we had it better than so many other people in this world. Like a lot of families, we had hard times, even more that I never knew about, but we made it through the best we could. I saw my parents work long hours in fields that were oftentimes difficult and demanding, my father a welder and my mother working in a manufacturing plant. They sacrificed and struggled. In a sense, it was the knowledge of my parents past and where they had come from, and the lived experience of my childhood that ‘radicalized’ me. This was the fuel that ignited my commitment to social and economic justice.

Radical; turn on the television and I guarantee that you will hear that word eventually, and fairly frequent I imagine. From FOX News to CNN, certain politicians, ideas, and policies are branded with the label.

FOX News Headline: “‘Radical’ Dems Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rhasida Tlaib embrace their reputations, slam President Trump.”

The Atlantic: “The Democratic Party is Radicalizing.”

The National Review: “Radicalism is on the Rise among Democrats.”

Washington Times: “Bernie reveals his radical Inclinations Over and Over Again.”

So radical, what does the word mean? Well, the definition of radical is – A. very different from the usual or traditional. B. favoring extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions. C. associated with political views, practices, and polices of extreme change.

Given this definition and the way that the media frames the use and debate of the word, it would appear that the people and ideas associated with radical are out of the mainstream of normal political discourse. The ideas that they advocate for, and even they themselves, are just too extreme. But is there any evidence for that? Are they really that extreme? Some of the ideas that are framed as radical are:  Medicare for All, tuition-free higher education, the Green New Deal, abolishing ICE, and certain tax policies among other things. Not surprisingly, most of the policies and politicians labeled this way are on the left end of the political spectrum.

But how radical or extreme are some of these policies? Medicare for All polls fairly well for a policy that is still considered fringe politics by some, polling around 56% to 74%. Some polls even show around 47% of Republicans supporting some form of government-administered health care system. Tuition-free higher education even polls well, with around 60% of the public saying they like the idea. And that poll shows 41% of Republicans holding that view. A newer idea, the Green New Deal, is also very favorable with the American people. One poll finds 81% of respondents saying they support some form of sweeping government intervention to combat the effects of climate change.

Now, of course, polling has its limitations and even its inaccuracies. The way polls are conducted, and the way questions are asked can affect the way people respond. But what this shows us is that these policies aren’t crazy ideas from the darkest corners of the internet. Instead, they are serious and worthy of debate. Furthermore, most of these ideas aren’t just ideas in most of the developed world. They are actual policies that have existed for many years in other countries.

I will concede that in our current political situation, some of these ideas are vastly different than the space we occupy. But I ask you to look at history. Look at all the major social and economic achievements that were accomplished. Were they radical for their time? Were the methods used to achieve them radical? Indeed, they were. Throughout history, it is only by the intense struggle of radical thinkers that society has been pushed forward. In contrast, it has always been the centrist moderate that has stood in the way, seeking to preserve – consciously or unconsciously – a repressive status quo. People on the right, and from the center, hurl these designations to the left in hopes of marginalizing them. Currently, and the in the past, terms like radical are used to stifle debate, scare and intimidate.

Photo by Archiv Gerstenberg:ullstein bild via Getty Images) Youngstown Steel Mill Strike –Photo by Archiv Gerstenberg/ullstein bild via Getty Images

The ‘radical’ perspective has always been about the democratization of society. The labor movement was considered radical and was responsible for all of the current worker protections we take for granted – the 40-hour work week, ending child labor, and various other benefits. The civil rights movement, also radical for its time, was responsible for the progress on racial justice that we see. At the time, people in power threw the term ‘radical’ at leaders like Martin Luther King and leaders of the labor movement. They called them anti-American and communists in an effort to intimidate them and scare the American public. In fact, people that belie radicals forget about the most significant expression of radicalism that this country has ever seen, the American Revolution.

When people try to label an idea or a person as radical and extreme, ask what they are implying? What is more extreme, wanting people to have the ability to live and support their families in a real and meaningful way or an economic situation that enriches the already rich and powerful while leaving millions of Americans behind, amounting to modern feudalism and corporate servitude? What is more extreme than an imperialist foreign policy that creates more terror and destabilizes regions? Is regulating a woman’s body over her and her doctors advice and concerns extreme? Is dictating the private consensual sexual relationships of adults extreme? Is careening toward annihilation while doing absolutely nothing about the most dangerous situation facing human existence today-climate change, extreme?

People in the so-called middle say that radicals are rigid purists, putting ideology above compromise. Former President Barack Obama even recently warned progressives about infighting and what he called a ‘circular firing squad’. But the ‘centrist middle’ has never been above ideology. They will say that they are pragmatic and focused on ‘what works’, unlike the purist radical. Well if you look at the current state of the world, the work of this class is failing. The centrists are just as radically ideological as the ‘radicals’ they decry. Theirs is a worship of the status quo.

Progressives should not be scared of the label of radical. Instead, we should embrace it. Embrace the historical significance and success of our radical revolutionary brothers and sisters. The way that people try to use the term in such a dismissive way, ignore the important role of radicals in pushing this country forward, with much of that work unfinished. There is much more work to be done and we should fight in their honor and their spirit. Being a radical means not just accepting the world for what it is today – undemocratic in every sphere, broken and rigged in favor of a small portion of the world’s population – but fighting like hell to change that. Radicals don’t just see the ills of society and want to change them, they do change them. With this, I gladly accept the label as radical in every meaning of the word.

Dale Seufert-Navarro